


The Sky Falls For Us Alone

by Inisheer



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, give maggie sawyer a backstory 2k17
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-10 05:45:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11685309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inisheer/pseuds/Inisheer
Summary: She hoped her aunt wouldn’t take too long.It didn’t feel real. Nothing but the cold biting her cheeks and the dark night – those were solid enough – nothing about what was happening right now could possibly be real. The world had dropped away beneath her feet and she’d been given, as a reprieve, enough time to pack a suitcase.





	1. Abuela

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings for homophobia, emotional abuse, family death (yes, again).

**Valentine’s**

Maggie’s breath misted in the lamplight glow. There was still snow on the ground where it had been shovelled into piles, condensing into mounds of solid ice children would slide over for days or weeks after the rest melted away. The mottled dusting of this evening’s flurry spread across the ground, whispering underfoot on path and road. Maggie could have sat indoors, in theory, but instead she’d pulled her suitcase out to the front yard and slumped down on it, gloved hands shoved under her armpits, her guitar resting by her side. Outside. Inside her parents had watched her with hollow eyes in an atmosphere more fragile than fresh snow.

She hoped her aunt wouldn’t take too long.

It didn’t feel real. Nothing but the cold biting her cheeks and the dark night – those were solid enough – nothing about what was happening right now could possibly be real. The world had dropped away beneath her feet and she’d been given, as a reprieve, enough time to pack a suitcase.

It was amazing how much of a life you could fit into a suitcase. Amazing how much you couldn’t. Amazing to think, as she peered along the road hoping for movement, that she wouldn’t walk home this way from the bus stop any more. That she wouldn’t let herself in, greet the dog, find Michael at the kitchen table scowling over his math homework, and go up to her own room in the house she’d lived in since she was born. It couldn’t be real. The voice in the back of her head insisted: _It’s a bad dream. This isn’t happening. You’ve got school on Monday._

Oh, god. What if they found out at school?

The other part of her, the rational part, knew better. Maggie wasn’t stupid. Quite smart, if she said so herself. Her parents were – her parents had been – which was it? Proud. For how well she did at school. But that was over, and she was smart enough to understand. She’d never seen Dad change his mind about anything important. And she’d never, ever seen him so angry.

There was no going back. Maggie _got_ that. She knew it was entirely possible for one day (one stupid decision) to ruin everything. It just wasn’t so easy to make herself believe it.

She was getting cold.

Where was Laura? Maggie was ready to leave. If they didn’t want her, why would she want to stay? Her parents drove her demented enough already. How many times had she swung herself onto her bike and pedalled as far from the house as she could get? But she’d always come home again. She hadn’t spent more than a week away from her bedroom since she was born, and that was the thing Maggie couldn’t fathom: that once she left, she wouldn’t be coming back. (Not real. Not real.) That once she left, they wouldn’t _be_ her family any more.

That her own parents didn’t want her. Or her dad didn’t, and her mom wasn’t willing to stand up to him, and Maggie didn’t know what would have happened if she had because how could you live in a house with someone who hated your guts? At least now she’d learned the truth. She hadn’t known they were capable of this. Better if she went, better for all of them.

She hadn’t known her dad’s love was conditional.

Hers wasn’t. Maggie should have hated him – if he was anyone else she’d happily have had nothing to do with him – but if she was honest, if she was totally honest, the only thing stopping her from turning round and begging her parents to let her stay was the knowledge that it wouldn’t make any difference. (How pathetic.) So screw them. If they didn’t _want_ her –

How was what she had done so awful?

Parents weren’t supposed to – they couldn’t – of course she’d heard of it happening – but she hadn’t thought _her_ parents –

Maggie knew how people thought about homosexuality. Round here, especially, you couldn’t miss it. It was a favourite topic if you could get people to talk about politics, and gay kids at school – not at her elementary school, but she’d heard of a few older – didn’t exactly have it easy; and Maggie, once again, wasn’t stupid. (Though her recent actions might cancel out any claim to intelligence, or at least to having the common sense of cabbage.) She’d just never believed any good person could look at two men or two women in love and see sin. She’d always believed her dad was a good person. She didn’t know what to believe now; only that they couldn’t both be true.

A car engine. Wheels on the unsalted road. Tia Laura’s headlights blazed as she pulled into the street. Maggie took her gloves off to breathe into cupped palms while her aunt parked. Soon Laura was crunching her way up the path and Maggie dragged herself to her feet to meet her, head spinning with the sudden movement. Laura stopped, frowning, and looked her niece up and down.

Maggie almost thought she was going to change her mind. _No, actually, I don’t want you either._

‘Look at you,’ said Laura. ‘Sitting out here in the cold. Where are your parents?’ She looked stern but her voice was gentle and Maggie realised, with a wave of relief that couldn’t totally dissipate the fear, that the sternnes wasn’t for her.

‘Inside,’ said Maggie. She was wrong, though. Behind her, the door clicked open and her mom’s face peered out.

‘Laura.’

‘Isabela.’

‘I’ll – should I get my things in the car?’ said Maggie, before they could say anything else. Despite their closeness, Mom and Tia Laura could be volatile with each other at the best of times. Sisters. Family. Maybe not so much now.

Laura turned to Maggie. ‘Is this everything? Here, let me.’ She stooped for the suitcase, and Maggie hurriedly lifted her guitar out of the way. (Even in its case, it would be out of tune from the cold. The image of warping wood twisted through Maggie’s mind’s eye and she felt oddly guilty.) ‘This doesn’t seem like much. What about your books?’

Maggie shrugged. She’d packed a couple of old favourites. Michael could have the rest, and her film collection – at least Maggie had her iPod. What would her parents do, she wondered, with the clothes she hadn’t taken, and the elementary-school art projects stowed under the bed?

Her things didn’t look like much in the trunk of Laura’s SUV. Maggie tossed her backpack onto the front passenger seat and tried to figure out if there were supposed to be goodbyes. Both her parents had made it out to the front stoop by now. Laura faced off against them, arms folded, chin tossed back, from a safe distance down the path.

‘What’s _happening_?’ said a small voice.

Matthew was supposed to be in bed. Michael too, but it wasn’t so horrifically past his bedtime, and he wasn’t six. Maggie watched her dad grab her baby brother by the shoulders before he could run towards her. There was Michael, hovering behind in the warmth of the porch.

‘Is Maggie going on holiday? Where’s she going?’

‘No,’ said Dad. ‘Maggie’s going away to live with Aunt Laura. She won’t be living with us any more.’

‘Why not? I don’t want Maggie to go away.’

Her mom was crying.

Michael said, ‘Dad –’ and Maggie said, ‘Mom –’ and Matthew said, ‘That’s not fair. Why does she have to leave?’

‘Because that’s what’s happening,’ said Dad. ‘Mikey, not right now.’ Her mom said nothing.

‘Dad, just let me –’

‘Michael Sawyer, I am warning you –’

Michael slipped between his parents and darted down the path. The shout of, ‘ _Michael!_ ’ that followed startled Matthew into silence but did nothing to slow his brother, who knocked Maggie back a couple of paces by throwing his arms around her neck. It was years since Michael had stopped hugging her. Or had it been Maggie who stopped? He was almost as tall as her now. She squeezed back.

‘I hate them,’ he whispered. ‘I hate them, I hate them.’

Maggie found herself saying, ‘It’s okay.’

‘It’s _not._ It’s all stupid and wrong and –’ They disentangled. ‘And I hate them. I wish I could come with you.’

‘I wish I didn’t have to go,’ said Maggie. ‘Hey. Look on the bright side. You’ll get your own room.’

Michael huffed. ‘Love you, Mags. Or whatever.’

‘Love you too. Keep in touch.’ Maggie ruffled his hair, glancing across at her parents, who hadn’t moved. Dad’s grip on Matthew’s shoulders looked painfully clenched. But Laura still stood between them, statuesque, until Michael went to give her a hug too. They exchanged words Maggie couldn’t hear, and Laura pointed him towards the house.

Then she was in the car, her aunt slamming the door on the other side, the air suddenly inert and fake-pine-scented. Maggie rubbed some feeling back into her hands before she fastened her seatbelt. Laura put the car in reverse, silenced the radio, and took them out into the road.

Maggie didn’t look back. She didn’t look anywhere. The world had shrunk to the interior of her aunt’s car, the weight of her backpack in her lap and the headrest too high against the back of her skull. This wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. Maggie wasn’t stupid and she knew if she pinched herself she’d only gain bruises, and yet, and yet, she couldn’t help thinking if she looked again it would all be different. It would all be back to normal. Rewind time and she could tear that note into a hundred pieces, swallow her useless crush, and never bring about any of this. Control-Z. One day.

The streets of Blue Springs passed by them in an illegible blur.

Maggie closed her eyes.

 

**1999**

One Saturday just before school started back they met Tia Laura and Abuela for lunch at the pizza place in Beatrice. Meals with grown-ups were boring, in Maggie’s experience, but Abuela was good at not asking stupid questions or expecting the kids to sit quietly while pretending they weren’t there, and the restaurant did the _best_ pizza, so while it might not be what Maggie would prefer to be doing it wasn’t horrible either.

When only scraps of pizza remained, Abuela wiped her lips and excused herself to head for the bathroom. Mom called over for a dessert menu, promising the kids ice cream. Tia Laura pursed her lips. ‘Careful, Bella. Lots of sugar in ice cream.’

‘A little ice cream won’t hurt them,’ Mom snapped.

Tia Laura made a face at Maggie, then looked up to scan the restaurant, maybe seeing if Abuela was on her way back. Something else must have caught her eye because she gasped, scandalised. ‘My word,’ she said. ‘There are two men over there – no, don’t look.’

Maggie’s mom, who’d half-turned her head, whipped back around to look pointedly in the other direction. ‘Were they…?’

‘In a family restaurant, too,’ said Laura.

Maggie was next to Laura, facing the right way, but she had the space by the wall and the tall diner-style seats obscured her view – standing was awkward – so she leaned past her aunt in an effort to see. She managed a glimpse before being shooed back into position. ‘Maggie, don’t look,’ Mom warned.

‘That’s exactly the problem. How are you supposed to explain _that_ to your children?’ said Tia Laura.

Explain what? Maggie might have only seen them very briefly, but she’d seen enough. Two men, bearded, heavyset, in work clothes. Holding hands. Husbands and wives did that all the time, or boyfriends and girlfriends. It seemed perfectly simple to her. She knew what the word _gay_ meant, though she’d never expected to meet anyone like that herself. It was interesting. Like spotting a rare wild bird, or finding coyote tracks in winter.

But from the way Mom and Tia Laura were reacting, Maggie thought, there must be something else going on. Then again, maybe not. She often ran into that problem at school: when the teacher asked a question surely _everyone_ knew the answer to, only it turned out they didn’t. All the same, there was something she wasn’t getting here, and she felt like pushing the matter; so Maggie said, ‘They were just holding hands. What do you need to explain?’

Her mom glanced at the boys. Michael was drawing intently on the back of the children’s menu despite having previously declared he was too old for crayons. Matthew was scribbling. He’d needed to be dissuaded from breaking the crayons into pieces ten minutes ago, and had left all the crusts from his pizza, but Mom hadn’t let Maggie take them in case he wanted them later.

Mom spoke in a low tone perfectly pitched to make Michael prick up his ears. ‘I know you might hold hands with your friends at school, or your brothers,’ she said (only when Maggie needed to prevent Matthew from running into traffic, but all right), ‘but when two adults hold hands like that, it usually means they’re – a couple.’ She took a breath in and continued before Maggie had time to say, _yeah, I know that._ ‘So there are some men who, instead of – being with – going on dates with women and getting married, claim they want to date men and – I know it must sound very strange.’ Another breath. ‘I’m sorry. You’re really too young to know about this. I don’t want to worry you.’

‘I’m not worried,’ said Maggie. She sat up straight, hoping to catch another look. ‘Do you think they’re married?’

‘Obviously not. Imagine it,’ said Tia Laura. ‘People like that can’t get married.’

Maggie tried to imagine it. She’d never spent much time on the thought before: two men or two women together-together, going on dates, kissing, having sex – Mom probably thought she’d never heard of sex either, but she knew about that, at least in the _very_ abstract. Adults tended to be funny about it. Maybe that was why Mom was being so shifty? Because otherwise, Maggie couldn’t see what the problem was. It made perfect sense. More sense than men and women, in a way, since they always seemed to be at war with each other. Two men would never get the laundry done, if they were anything like the men she knew, but they might be happier about it and they could watch football together instead. Or maybe they’d learn how to do laundry.

_People like that._

At school, “gay” was an insult, but so was “girl”, and there was nothing wrong with being one of those. Kids were stupid sometimes. Grown-ups hardly talked about gay people at all. Maggie hadn’t realised they might think it was a bad thing too. Was it? But why?

‘Are there lots of people like that?’ she asked.

Mom said, ‘No. There aren’t many. You’ll probably never come across them again.’

Abuela had made her way back from the bathroom. ‘What are you all talking about?’ she asked, carefully taking her seat.

‘Did you see that couple by the window?’

‘Oh? Yes, I did.’

‘But they’re here in the restaurant. How would they be in our restaurant if they were really rare, like if they were a one-in-a-million type thing –’ Maggie persisted.

Mom said, ‘No. A little more common than that. I suppose they’re not much trouble as long as they keep to themselves.’

‘That ridiculous Ellen woman’s all over the TV nowadays,’ said Laura.

Abuela hushed her. ‘Stop it. God has bigger things to worry about than who a woman shares her bed with.’

Both sisters froze in shock. It took Maggie a moment to figure out that sentence. When she did she lit up in quiet glee (Michael’s still-confused frown only added to the moment). Abuela liked to say that being old, and wise, and a respected elder, meant she was allowed to say the most could-not-give-a-damn things she felt like, and she was known for taking advantage. Neither Mom nor Tia Laura contradicted her.

Abuela grinned at Maggie. ‘Now are we getting dessert?’

* 

Dolores’s life proceeded with rhythmic familiarity. Each day she rose from an empty bed in a quiet house, fed herself, fed the parakeet, took a careful shower. Dressed herself up as if she had places to go – no further than the edge of Blue Springs. This morning she’d taken a trip to the post office.

Afterwards, seeking something to do, she’d pottered along to the church to confess her sins; though she didn’t have much chance to rack up many sins these days, and certainly not many new ones. Those had been the days. Now there was only envy of the young people, with good strong knees and more than half their lives ahead of them; perhaps a few comments about the neighbours she might wish to take back; and the small sin, of only going to confession because she’d been seeking something to do.

Her age-mates seemed to find it comfortable. They spoke with pleasure of their afternoon naps and shows. Dolores had tried the one today, but a quiet doze was difficult with her joints complaining of rain, so she’d picked up her needles instead to knit with an audiobook in the background.

Retirement was not all she’d been promised.

But today there was excitement. There was a sound she’d been hoping for: footsteps, and a key in the kitchen door, and a bedraggled figure blown in from the rain like the coming of spring. Dolores put her knitting down.

‘Come to see your old abuela?’ she said.

‘You’re not old.’ Maggie shed her backpack and soaked jacket, then wrapped her arms around Dolores’s neck and gave her a kiss. ‘Canon Peterson is old. You’re just, um. Mature.’

‘Mature, am I? Like one of those big trees?’

Maggie nodded, let go, and headed straight for the snack cupboard. She climbed onto the counter to reach the top shelf with the ease of someone who’d done so far more times than Dolores thought she should allow. Instead of telling her off, Dolores accepted an oatmeal cookie. She gave Maggie a pointed look, though, when the girl finished her first and reached for a second, and Maggie rolled her eyes and returned the packet to its place.

A crumb gone down the wrong way turned into a proper coughing fit. Maggie stared in horror for a moment, then raced to fetch Dolores a glass of water.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Trying to inhale my cookie. It’s nothing to worry about.’ The water helped. ‘Thank you, carino.’

She handed Maggie one of the balls of yarn to help keep it untangled, and picked up her needles again. They were silent for a while as Dolores threaded the colourwork into the purl row and Maggie looped the yarn towards her. No need to always be talking. Maggie would say something when she was ready, and after a bit, she did.

‘What are you knitting?’

‘A scarf for your brother.’

‘Which brother?’

‘Matthew.’

Maggie squinted. ‘He won’t like it if it’s got pink in it.’

‘He’s three. What does he know?’

Maggie grinned, all the way to dimples, and it occurred to Dolores she wasn’t sure when she’d last seen that smile. Her grandaughter usually smiled more easily. She’d only just started middle school, and Bella reported that she was doing well enough, but – that was Bella’s word for it.

Dolores continued with, ‘Pink used to be for boys, and blue for girls. Did you know that?’

Maggie shook her head.

‘What are they teaching you at school? It’s true. Pink didn’t become the girls’ colour until the war. They still dress girls in blue in China, I’ve read, and of course le Madre de Dios has always worn blue, so really pink should be for boys. Wouldn’t you agree?’

Maggie nodded, idly wrapping a scrap of yarn around her finger.

‘So how is school? Are they working you hard?’

‘It’s not as hard as they all said it’d be,’ said Maggie, with a shrug.

Dolores turned her knitting to start the most finicky row of the cable sequence. ‘Then what’s got you twisted in a knot?’

‘I, um.’ Maggie put her hand to her head. ‘Mom asked me a couple of days ago how Rebecca’s settling into sixth grade and I didn’t know because I’ve barely spoken to Rebecca since school started. We didn’t fall out or anything. She’s just got other friends but Mom seems to think we’re still best friends like we were in second grade.’

‘Are you still talking to any of your old friends?’ Dolores asked gently.

‘Yeah. Yeah, I hang out with Grace and Rosie…’ Maggie trailed off. Eyes fixed on the table, she continued, ‘They don’t pay much attention to me. They think the things I want to talk about are boring and I think the things _they_ talk about are stupid – they’re always laughing about nothing – I don’t know why they’re the ones who get to choose.’

Dolores put her knitting down. ‘Come here, sweetheart,’ she said. Maggie shuffled her chair over for a hug.

‘I must admit, I’ve never expected you to stay friends with Grace and Rebecca all the way through high school. Remember when you tried to explain to Grace that we speak _English_ and not _American_? How long ago was that?’

‘About fourth grade,’ said Maggie. She’d managed a smile at the memory, but her next words almost made Dolores’s heart break for her: ‘Only, if I’m not friends with them, who will I be friends with?’

It had been so easy for both her daughters. For Laura’s children. None of them, to Dolores’s knowledge, had ever spent much time at the edge of the crowd wondering what they were doing wrong. Maggie wasn’t like them – but she was familiar. She’d always been this skinny, thoughtful thing with big brown eyes, and she’d tell you what she was thinking so freely it was easy to miss she hadn’t told you how she _felt._ Maybe she’d have it easier if she tried to fit in but most likely she didn’t know how, any more than Dolores had known how, at eleven, tripping over English verbs, ready to crawl into bed with creased library books and stay there forever.

And Maggie was wonderful. Dolores was biased, she knew that, had loved Maggie since she was passed into her arms as a sleeping newborn (swaddled in pink) and always would – but Maggie was wonderful. She was still small, still had those big brown eyes, wore clothes that gave the impression she’d happily wander around in pyjamas if that was a socially acceptable option. She’d taught Dolores more about dinosaurs than she’d thought there was to know and some things about cars she wished she didn’t, and she was funny and engaging and Dolores could see why nothing she said would go down well among the majority of sixth-grade girls, and she hated them for it. (There was a confession to baffle the canon.)

She could picture Maggie going quiet, withdrawing into herself, those sunrise smiles of hers ever rarer; and she didn’t know what she could do, but offer comfort and prayer.

Dolores rubbed Maggie’s shoulder. ‘Have you told your parents? What do they say?’

‘Mom says I should make more effort. I think she means I should play along but I don’t –’

‘No,’ said Dolores. ‘You should never pretend to be anyone other than exactly who you are. You’re clever and kind and wonderful and if the people at school can’t see that, they’re the ones missing out.’

Maggie flashed her a sharp look. ‘You’re my abuela. Of course you’d say that.’

‘I’m your abuela and I’m always right,’ Dolores corrected. She gave Maggie’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘And until you find the people who really want to be your friends, you’ll always have your old abuela.’

‘You’re not old.’

‘No? Tell that to my sore wrists,’ said Dolores, allowing the change of subject. She waved Maggie away. Maggie shuffled the chair back across and picked up the yarn again, but Dolores paused with a hand to her chest while another bout of dry coughs racked through her.

‘You should go and see a doctor about that cough,’ said Maggie, far too seriously for a child of eleven.

‘It’s nothing a little milk won’t wash down,’ said Dolores. ‘Mind now, I wouldn’t say no to another cookie.’

* 

‘We weren’t _fighting_ , Mom. It was just a discussion,’ said Maggie.

‘Yeah. We were discussing how Maggie’s wrong,’ Michael added. Maggie made a threatening gesture with her spoon, then sat up straight as Mom turned round to return Matthew to his chair for the third time that morning.

‘It’s a waste of time, that’s what it is,’ said Mom, giving them both warning looks. Then, to Michael’s glee, ‘Maggie, are you sure you don’t want any milk on those?’

‘Nuh-uh,’ said Maggie. She crammed another spoonful of dry Cornflakes into her mouth. Michael had practically drowned his in whole milk. They’d been having the same circular argument about the right way to eat cereal for over five years. (It got paused on Sundays, when Dad cooked.)

‘Oh, Maggie, have you heard anything about Grace’s party yet? It must be getting to that time,’ said Mom.

Maggie shrugged. ‘Sure. She handed out the invites. I didn’t get one.’

‘Whyever not?’

Two months into sixth grade, and her elementary-school friends had melted away like thawing ice. Maggie had never been _close_ to them, except geographically, and she didn’t miss them for themselves. It just kind of sucked. It seemed like they’d all managed to make new friends, inserting themselves snugly into the new social cliques forming, while Maggie was left at the edges to fend off bullies who thought her dark skin and band membership made her easy prey.

She couldn’t explain that. Maggie said, ‘I just didn’t, okay?’

‘Don’t you have any friends, Maggie?’ Michael said, grinning. Maggie gave him a sharp kicked under the table. ‘Mom! Mags kicked me!’

‘No I didn’t, you little liar. And stop calling me that.’

‘ _Children_ ,’ said Mom. She continued to sip on her coffee, leaning against the counter, steely gaze fixed on Matthew when he looked like he might wriggle away again. (He didn’t much like milk in cereal either and, being three, nobody would let him put up a protest.)

‘Sorry, Mom.’

‘ _Don’t_ you, though?’

Mom nodded as if she agreed with Michael. ‘You really should be trying to make friends, Maggie.’

‘I _am_ trying.’

‘Maybe you could make more of an effort,’ Mom continued, looking her up and down. It sounded like the same thing, but Maggie knew what _an effort_ meant – she’d been hearing it more and more recently. Her mom smiled, and _that_ looked like an effort, and not particularly kind. ‘Nobody wants to be friends with the girl who hasn’t had a haircut in a year.’

‘Mom. Stop it.’

‘Fine. What about boys? Have you met any cute ones?’

Maggie made a gagging noise, and Mom tsked. ‘You’ll change your mind about that soon enough.’ She turned her attention to Matthew, a looming shadow determined to make him eat his Cornflakes. Maggie focused sullenly on her own. She already had an English presentation today, and they were doing a group project in science – group projects were the worst – did Mom have to go and mess with her head too?

It was only school. She made it through science without throwing a Bunsen at anyone, and then she made it through her English talk without dropping her notes or tripping over her words like the poor boy who’d gone ahead of her, and once she’d sat down and her heart rate had gone back to normal Maggie felt almost calm.

During the following talk, a folded scrap of paper landed on Maggie’s desk. She frowned at it, glanced backwards, and saw the girl diagonal from her make an irritated hand movement. Maggie waited until the teacher’s back was turned, then leaned forward to tap the girl in front on the shoulder. She passed the note across and silently indicated the source. Sly grins were exchanged. Maggie caught a glimpse of one of those fortune-telling games scribbled in purple pen, the ones that told you who you were going to marry and where you were going to live, and she dug her nails into her palms in a flash of sudden anger. For _that?_

After class she hurried to catch up with them. ‘Hey. That wasn’t cool. What if I’d gotten caught?’

They were both taller than her, and both more popular, and in their blank expressions Maggie started to think she was making a fool of herself. ‘What wasn’t?’ said the sender, Rachel.

‘That note. You know that’s not allowed.’

‘So?’

‘I didn’t know you were so worried about following the rules,’ said Anna, the recipient.

Maggie stood her ground. ‘I’m not. It wasn’t _my_ note.’

‘You didn’t have to pass it on.’

‘Don’t be a cow, Rachel,’ said a new voice, and they all registered Eliza’s presence at the same moment. ‘She’s got a point. Once she’d got the note she’d have been in trouble anyway.’

‘You should at least ask people if they mind being your messenger,’ Maggie added.

Anna and Rachel looked at each other. ‘Fine. Whatever.’ Rachel hitched her bag on one shoulder. ‘Let’s go and get lunch.’

It was an exclusive _we_ ; exclusive of Maggie, and exclusive of Eliza too. Maggie wasn’t sure why the other girl had helped her. They’d never really spoken, outside discussions in English. Maggie didn’t know much about her, other than she was pretty – prettier than the girls who’d been passing notes, despite their more stylish haircuts and clothes – and less popular, too, by middle school metrics.

‘Uh. Thanks.’

‘It’s no bother,’ said Eliza. ‘Hey, so. I liked your presentation.’

It was an unassuming start, but it was something to latch onto, and carried them into a lively conversation while their feet and the flow of people directed them automatically to the canteen. Soon they stood at the corner of the hall, trays in hand, scanning the packed space. Eliza blinked at Maggie.

‘Do you wanna go find your friends or…?’

Not particularly. Maggie wasn’t in a hurry to sit silently eating her lunch while the others discussed plans for a party she wasn’t invited to, and it wasn’t as if Grace and company would care she was missing. She doubted they’d notice.

‘I mean – obviously don’t feel you need to stick around, if they’re your friends and all, but you never look very happy over there and I guess I thought – I was wondering if you’d want to…’ Eliza had gone pink. She was the pale, freckled sort, and it turned out she went pink quite dramatically. It was cute.

‘And nobody will mind if I sit with you guys?’ said Maggie.

Eliza laughed. ‘No. You’re totally welcome.’

She led Maggie over to a table in the corner, swinging a chair over when she realised they were one short, and the kids already there shuffled over to make space. ‘Guys, this is Maggie. She’s in my English class. Do you know…?’

She’d come across a few of the others at the table, but not the girls nearest, who seemed to be Eliza’s closest friends. Tania, in dungarees and a French braid, peppered Maggie with questions and happily shared around candy from her packed lunch. Curly-haired Amy was more reserved, almost cold, and greeted a couple of Maggie’s attempts at jokes with an expression like pity – though the others laughed.

Maggie wasn’t convinced she was _totally_ welcome. ‘I don’t think Amy likes me much,’ she said quietly, walking to their next class, out of earshot from the others.

‘She’ll warm up. She hit me with a book once before we became friends,’ said Eliza.

‘When was that?’

‘Kindergarten.’

‘So you’re best friends, right?’

‘Yeah.’ Eliza grinned. ‘Like this.’ She crossed her fingers in demonstration. Maggie tilted her head at Amy up in front, and thought she understood. She’d never had a best friend to care about losing.

The following day, when Maggie joined them again, her heart fluttered in her ribs at the worry that Amy might have convinced Eliza to change her mind. But Amy only shrugged when Maggie arrived, and continued the lecture she was giving to Tania in rock-paper-scissors strategy, while Eliza was waiting for Maggie with a broad smile; and if that caused a different kind of fluttering, at least it was a rather more pleasant one.

They weren’t exactly friends yet, but all of a sudden Maggie could see that she and Eliza were going to be – not merely friends, but the best of friends – and (never mind the fear of how Eliza’s more established friends might feel about it) the certainty filled her with a reassurance warm enough to stifle the warning whispers about how capricious middle-school girls could be. The whispers spoke in Mom’s voice, and Mom didn’t know anything. The only other place Maggie could feel this confident of welcome was her abuela’s kitchen; and that very day she ran to her house after school, to tell Abuela about her new friends, and eat chocolate-chip cookies against the sound of rain.

* 

The doctors talked to her like she was slow. Dolores would have given them a tongue-lashing for that, if she’d had the breath. It was her lungs failing on her. Not her mind. Not any other part of her either: if it weren’t for the wretched cough she’d feel perfectly healthy.

She knitted. There wasn’t much else to do. If she was quick she’d finish Laura’s socks before she passed on. They contained lurid green strips, clashing terribly with the orange, and had eyesore frills around the edges, and Laura would feel compelled to wear them, as the last gift from her dying mother.

‘Do you think she’ll get it?’ Maggie asked, spooling out the yarn.

‘If she doesn’t, you can tell her. Make sure she wears them.’

‘I will.’

Hospital life was dull, but barely more so than ordinary life, which made Dolores think. Seemed a waste of her final years. She wished she’d travelled more. She’d travelled plenty, when Miguel was alive, but she wished she’d travelled more. Since. Weren’t you supposed to, when you retired – buy an RV and hurtle around the country until you got stuck in Florida? Harder if you wanted your grandkids to go to college, though. Or if you’d have been going alone because you weren’t the first in the family to go down barely-swinging in a first-round knockout against a malignant tumour.

She prayed. _Oh Lord, I know you work in mysterious ways and it is not for us to question your judgement, but this really does seem a trifle unfair._ She imagined He was amused.

‘Does it hurt now?’

‘Not as much as when your mother was born.’ Maybe not the time for jokes. ‘No. Not anymore.’

She could have had another twenty good years.

Her husband hadn’t been old. Nor had her son-in-law. Dolores had made it further than them but she wasn’t old either. Oh, old enough for the rest of the world, but not old for America, and young enough to be annoyed about dying. Her own mother was only ten years in the ground, had outlived her by fifteen, and Dolores was certain of mockery when they met again.

That was something to look forward to, at least. Seeing them all again. But she was loath to leave the ones here behind. Even if she did see more of them now than she had for about a decade.

(If she’d been travelling, she wouldn’t have been around to watch the children grow up. Was that a waste?)

God’s truth, it was her own fault. She’d smoked. The doctors told her, on repeat: Smoking Causes Cancer. Frankly, it was a little late now for the lecture. Maggie liked to lecture too, with books from the library, well-thumbed pages, what tobacco did to lungs and throats. Dolores hadn’t seen her cry but she knew the child was taking it hard. She worried. Her reassurances about Heaven and God’s love seemed to fall on deaf ears and oh, it was another world – if she made it one more month she’d see in a new millennium, though she wasn’t going to – and the papers spoke of young people abandoning their religion. If Maggie didn’t have faith, what would she have? How could a person survive untethered from the most abiding love?

She needed it now, herself. _Oh Lord, give me the courage to face death with dignity, and the strength not to slap that patronising prat of an oncologist right in his luminous teeth._

‘Why can’t the doctors cure cancer?’

‘Sometimes they can. It’s not all one thing, carino.’

She hated dying in a hospital, slowly, by a thousand sponge baths and pills in paper cups. Her hospital room made her think of a prison cell, though Dolores supposed prisons would have better food, and it was her own body keeping her trapped here. Nobody needed to stop her walking out; they’d only have to wait until she doubled over, put her in a wheelchair and bring her back. She missed grass and her parakeet and, to her own surprise, people. The visiting hours were too short. Her wardmates complained about the radio. There wasn’t much else to do but knit and worry.

Laura showed up every day, there on the dot when the ward opened. Sometimes the kids came with her, sometimes not, and once or twice they traipsed up on their own to meet Laura there. Bella usually arrived later, children in tow, and if she felt up to it Dolores took the baby in her lap (less of a baby now, but he still wouldn’t remember her). This week she didn’t feel up to it. Michael pestered the doctors about the medical devices. Maggie stood sullen in too-big T-shirts or dark sweatshirts, hair falling over her face, smiles all gone. Dolores watched Bella chide her, constantly. _Be polite, Maggie. Sit up straight, Maggie._ When Dolores asked Maggie a question – _Have you been helping out at home? –_ it was Bella who answered. _That’ll be the day._

‘Why is she so hard on me?’

‘I don’t know. Sometimes that happens, between mothers and daughters.’

‘And I’m not the daughter she wanted.’

Knit. Add one. Laura and Bella gone to fetch coffee, while Laura’s daughter entertained the boys with some paper-folding trick. ‘That’s not true. She loves you.’

‘I know she does, but it’s still true. She wanted someone – pink. She wanted a _girl._ ’

‘That’s not on you.’

Maggie bit her lip. ‘If it was, maybe I could do something about it.’

Purl. Purl. Two together. Three things to do: knit, worry, and reflect on the unseen mistakes of her life. Dolores wondered how a smiling little girl with ribbons in her hair had grown into a pushy, sniping woman. Where had she gone wrong? She’d tried to teach her daughters to be kind but Bella had no heart and Laura no courage. (Did that make her, she guessed, the one without brains?) And Maggie, who saw too much, who didn’t fit, who wouldn’t be comforted with Heaven or prayer, already needed more protection than Dolores could offer. More than she’d have known how to give even if she was sticking around. Michael and Matthew were easier, she thought, boys had it easier; boys, after all (in Dolores’s humble opinion) were not very clever, even the intelligent ones. They’d be all right. Laura’s two were almost grown, past the worst days of teenager-dom, the bright lights of college about to lure them away. But Maggie –

She prayed. _Oh Lord, give my grandaughter strength. And if you could see to making Isabela a little nicer to her, that would be appreciated also._

Maggie was clever, and already kind, but Dolores couldn’t tell yet how strong she was. Would it be enough?

Prayer comforted _her_ , at least. The rosary beads were a familiar weight in her weak hands. Rhythm of the count. Hail Mary. All shall be well in the Kingdom of Heaven, but it’s on earth we have to look out for each other, and soon Dolores would not be here. She’d told Maggie she would be. It had never been a promise but Dolores saw it broken all the same, when she looked at the girl, though Maggie herself understood full well it was beyond her control.

What had she done, to deserve this punishment?

‘How do you do that?’

‘Wrap the yarn round like this, yes, like so, then put your thumb here…’

Dolores finished the socks. She wove flowers from the loose ends of thread. No point starting another project. She spoke to Maggie in stolen moments while Bella tried to keep her bored sons from throwing up a racket, small hand in her frail one; talking about the friends she’d finally managed to make and keep, Christmas presents, American history and the inevitability of death as though they belonged in the same conversation. And Maggie didn’t cry.

(Michael did, every time they left, in the ceaseless awareness that this might be the last time he saw her. Bella could shed tears for a tropical storm. Laura pretended she hadn’t, and Dolores let her.)

In the last days of her life, she caught Laura by the sleeve. It was harder to talk now. Laura bent her head close to let her mother save breath.

‘Watch out for the children,’ Dolores said. ‘You will, won’t you?’

Laura smiled. Dolores wondered if she was being humoured. ‘Of course, Mama.’

‘I mean it. Or I’ll come back and haunt you.’ Not that she believed in hauntings, but it was the spirit of the thing.

How had a little girl with the Ave Maria on her tongue, collecting shells in a red dress by a tropical sea, become a breathless old woman dying in a whitewashed Nebraskan hospital?

She should have travelled. Skip the RV. _One_ holiday.

Maggie brought her books full of pictures of the ocean, and asked her if it was as beautiful as the pictures made it seem. _Better._ I’d love to see it someday. _When you’re grown up, you’ll be able to take yourself._

‘Dad says travelling is expensive. Everything’s expensive. I know grown-ups can’t just do whatever they like.’

‘No. But they can do more than they let themselves realise.’

Maggie nodded solemnly. She said, ‘I’m gonna miss you.’

‘Not too much.’

‘More than that.’

They left. Visiting hours were over. Final rounds came and went, and at the end the lights were switched off. The dim glow of the emergency strips and a string of pink fairy lights round the door, for Christmas, remained to cast shadows across white walls now hazy grey. A final thing to wonder, a question she’d never have an answer to: why did it get quieter in the dark?

_Oh Lord, let me not be afraid…_

* 

It was the first funeral Maggie had ever been to.

For once, she didn’t argue about dresses. Mom had bought her a black one, with shoes to match, and Maggie might think the wearing-black thing was stupid but she knew better than to argue about either the colour or the dress. It wasn’t that bad, as dresses went. And she didn’t care. Her abuela was dead.

It felt like the end of time.

Mom would have yelled at her about the expense if she’d argued, most likely. That was what her parents had been talking about recently. (Normally they’d have kept such discussions out of earshot from the kids, but these were strange times.) Apparently dying was expensive.

That was something to think about. Besides the obvious.

She wouldn’t remember much, later, about the first funeral she attended. She’d remember thinking: why bother with a fancy coffin if you were only going to put it in the ground? Long ago they’d turned people to mummies, or wrapped them in shrouds, and sometimes still they were burned. Maggie wondered if Abuela might have preferred that, to be cremated, and the ashes scattered – maybe on the sea; they could have gone – rather than buried in dry Nebraska with cows watching over the cemetery walls. Not that it made much difference now.

Ashes to dust, or something, and lots of adults trying to comfort Maggie with words like _in a better place_ and _looking down on you_ but that wasn’t comforting at all because she knew, really, nobody had ever come back from being dead – not from being properly, all the way dead – so they had no idea if there was anything after at all.

Tia Laura pulled Maggie aside to ask how she was holding up. Tia Laura, who’d lost her mom, when Maggie had only lost her abuela. No matter how much she’d loved Abuela (lots, lots, so much) or how ridiculous it was to rank your love by your official relationship to someone (very), she still knew it would be harder than this (and this was hard enough) if something happened to Mom or Dad. She couldn’t imagine it. She didn’t want to imagine it. But Tia Laura, who was living it, asked Maggie how _she_ was doing, and in response Maggie did the only thing she could think of: she wrapped her arms around her aunt’s waist and clung tight, until she wasn’t sure who was comforting who.

She wouldn’t remember much, later, about what it was like to lose her grandmother. There was the old normal before and the new normal after and the disjunct between them vanished down a dark hole of painful memory, suffused in the scent of hospital disinfectant. She was eleven, and she’d lost one of her tethering points in the world, and it was not enough to try and believe Abuela still existed, and only loved her from a different direction than before, without any way to know if it was true. But wasn’t it selfish – to be upset about missing someone – when they were the dead one, and being dead was probably a bigger deal to them than merely missing them was to you?

It would be four months until Maggie cried. But the next day she had to go back to school.

Her parents said it would be good to get back to normal. It was horrible. The teachers were worst, determined to ask how she was feeling, and talking to Maggie like she was suddenly fragile. There was some bereavement group therapy hokum her counsellor wanted her to go to (fat chance). As for her classmates – individually they might be better, but everyone had heard, and by mid-morning Maggie thought the next person to utter the words _I’m sorry_ would get a desk around their ears.

Her friends took one look and sensibly shut up.

Tania gave Maggie half her muffin and Amy said, ‘Wow. That’s an honour, you know,’ and Eliza gripped Maggie’s hand under the table and didn’t let go, right through lunch.

Later at her house they pulled the sofas together, threw a couple of blankets over the top, and crawled inside with most of the Wilkies’ cushions and a month’s supply of Oreos. Eliza said something about building dens with Amy, all the time, when they were younger. Maggie didn’t tell her she’d only ever built them with Michael, and those had been more pirate ship and Batcave than a place to hide.

‘Are you going to be okay?’

‘I think so.’

‘That’s good.’ Eliza handed her an Oreo. ‘I liked your grandma.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’

She leaned against Eliza’s side, listening to the sound of footsteps outside their den. Eliza’s mom said, ‘What have you done with all the cushions?’

‘Maggie’s _grieving_ , Mom.’

Maggie couldn’t see, but she could picture Mrs Wilkie throwing her hands up in despair. ‘Well, whenever you’re finished, put them back.’ Eliza put her hand to her mouth, trying not to laugh, and Maggie had no idea why but it _was_ funny, and they found themselves in a fit of suppressed giggles.

Once they’d recovered she told Eliza about the dress, about her thoughts on coffins, about one day wanting to see the sea. Eliza said, ‘California!’ They talked about surfing.

And maybe time would start again, after all.


	2. Bella

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for… The usual: homophobia including mention of slurs, emotional abuse. And, of all things, spoilers for Heathers.

**2002**

‘Really? You don’t think he’s gorgeous?’

‘He’s too buff, Tania. I like – I like skinnier guys,’ said Eliza, frowning at one of the celebrity men photographed in black and white in the fashion magazine. Tania had amassed a fair collection, spread out between crumb-covered plates and empty milkshake glasses.

‘Don’t tell her that. She’ll try and find someone to set you up with,’ Maggie warned. Tania and Eliza jumped. Amy calmly piled two plates together and stacked them onto Maggie’s tray.

‘Working hard?’ she said.

‘Very.’ Maggie had been on-shift at the diner since ten, and she’d spent nearly all of it standing. Her feet hurt. She’d almost scalded herself twice. She had – as she’d learned over the past couple of weeks – a very low tolerance for stupid customers, bad-tempered ones, lost road-trippers, crying toddlers, and pretty much any of the diner’s patrons who made serving coffee and pie for five hours more complicated than it needed to be. Maggie did _not_ like waitressing.

Today was proving better than most, though, since her friends had shown up to provide moral support and light entertainment. ‘When do you finish?’ Amy asked her.

‘Just under an hour,’ said Maggie.

Amy nodded and went back to her book. The discussion between Tania and Eliza continued while Maggie picked up the milkshake glasses. ‘What about him, then?’

‘Yeah…’ said Eliza, hesitantly. ‘Yeah. OK. He’s all right.’

‘All right? He’s beautiful. I could just – guys, what do you think?’

‘I’m not getting involved,’ said Amy, without looking up.

Maggie leaned over to get a good view of the pictures. She couldn’t say what she was supposed to be looking for. One of them was less unappealing than the other, so – ‘Him on the left, I guess,’ she said with a shrug.

Tania huffed. ‘You guess? I don’t know what I’m doing with you two.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ said Eliza, flicking through a different magazine. ‘Maybe some of us aren’t totally at the mercy of our hormones when we see a man with a nice jawline. Or Tommy Jones from algebra,’ she added.

Tania flushed pink. ‘What about Tommy?’

‘He has warts all over his hands and he kind of spits when he talks to you,’ said Maggie. She’d run out of plates to gather but she wasn’t in a hurry to leave. It was fairly quiet right now, and with any luck she’d get away with a couple of minutes’ hovering before Dad noticed. She contemplated pulling her pad out to pretend she was taking an order.

‘So, yeah, while _that’s_ the best any of us can do, I’m going to be too busy being jealous of Reese Witherspoon’s hair,’ said Eliza. ‘Isn’t she pretty? I wish I could get my hair to do that.’

Maggie looked. Hair. Yes. Hair, that was what she should focus on; not the familiar-unfamiliar lurching sensation in her stomach, at the shape of the actress’s eyes and lips and the way her dress clung to her body. Hair. Not the way the picture seemed to pull her in, impossible to tear her gaze away from, far more interesting than any man –

‘Maggie! Aren’t you working?’

Dad’s voice. The shout yanked Maggie from her reverie. She waved apologetically to her friends and darted off to deal with a couple of neglected customers.

Maggie didn’t know when everybody had started getting obsessed with boys and dates and kissing. It seemed to have snuck by her – which irked on principle, since Maggie considered her observational skills quite good, and was proud of them. But she missed things like gossip. _Her_ friends hadn’t changed: Tania had always been boy-crazy, Amy had adopted the air of a bemused naturalist, and Eliza – well, Eliza had gone on a couple of dates, voluntarily, but she was still Eliza the rest of the time.

Now the rumours went around that certain classmates had done way more than kissing, and kids were pairing up, and (regardless the opinion of teen movies in which dads forbade their daughters from dating until sixteen) they probably _were_ old enough, all things considered. They were going to be at high school in a couple of months. Maggie would be fourteen. She thought by now she should probably be able to think of at least one boy she’d consent to be locked in a cupboard with.

She stopped to serve an old lady in a pink cardigan, who clearly wanted the chat more than the coffee, and Maggie allowed herself to be distracted by nonsense from Fox News for a couple of minutes. But once back at the counter, she had nowhere to hide from her thoughts.

If it was only that she _didn’t_ like boys, it would be one thing –

No. It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be, not here. Maggie knew what life was like for queer kids at the high school, for the one out kid in their class. Her parents certainly wouldn’t approve. _No._

No sensible girl would want to date any of the boys on offer round here. That didn’t make her gay.

The word thudded into Maggie’s head like a thunderbolt. She hadn’t been reaching for the word – just the idea – but it was so short, quick and slippery, like the glass that had just slid from her grasp and into the soap suds with a warm splash.

Dad stopped on his way to the kitchen with an armful of dirty plates. ‘You okay?’

The word sounded too much like –. Maggie unfroze. ‘Yeah, I’m cool,’ she said, fishing the glass out. ‘You’ve been making me work too long!’ she added to the swinging door, and heard Dad’s bellow of laughter float back through.

Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, like they did in gym. Better. Not the word, just the – would a straight girl even be asking herself this? Something about the possibility made an unnerving kind of sense. It fitted. Maggie had tried kissing boys, the first one so Tania would stop giving her grief over it, later in games of Spin the Bottle and Truth or Dare, and she’d never felt anything but unwelcome sliminess.

Not the word, just the idea. And even letting the idea flit across her mind, that it might be a girl instead, brought back that lurching sensation.

Maybe?

When Maggie’s shift ended her friends were waiting for her. They went to buy ice pops, magazines shoved into bags, and sat on the sidewalk to eat them, debating whether or not they were too old to sell lemonade.

‘That’s for kids,’ Tania insisted. ‘We’re teenagers.’

‘Wow, really? I had no idea,’ said Eliza. Maggie leaned back to let Tania take a swipe at her for sarcasm.

The sun threatened to melt their skin, the tar on the road, their clothes into their flesh, and succeeded in melting the ice pops, so the blue sugary stuff dripped onto their hands and rendered them incurably sticky. On Eliza’s other side, Amy broke her popsicle stick into increasingly tiny splinters.

‘Lemonade stands are fun, though,’ said Maggie.

‘We wouldn’t make any money. Not with four of us.’ Tania squinted. ‘Hey – how much does your dad pay you for working in the diner?’

‘Yeah, right. Like I’m telling.’

Eliza laughed at Tania’s miffed expression and, having finished her ice pop, lay down with her head in Maggie’s lap. Amy claimed her stick. Maggie stroked Eliza’s hair with her less-sticky hand and asked Tania, ‘What is it – are you looking for a job?’ She talked to Tania about what she’d learned in a whole three weeks of working in customer service. When Tania noticed what Amy was up to with the popsicle sticks (Maggie’s had now joined the collection), she shifted round to interrogate her on it. After that, Maggie didn’t say much at all.

Reese Witherspoon. Men in suits, in black and white, framed to perfection. Maggie stared at the heat haze over the road, letting the world reconfigure around her, testing out how it felt. A scary thought but a simple one, and so obvious – how had she not realised sooner? Or maybe she had. It didn’t feel like a surprise.

(If she was totally, totally honest, she’d been aware of it for a while. She hadn’t known but she had – suspected, looking at the possibility sideways like you might keep an eye on someone walking not far enough behind you, as it came closer until a confrontation was inevitable. Why today? Why now? She might as well ask: why that drop of water, to make the glass spill over? Why that straw?)

(She must had known, deep down, known for a while there was something – different – about how nice it felt to sit like this, with a girl’s head in her lap, stroking her hair.) (With Eliza’s head in her lap, stroking her hair.)

The thought that she might never deal with boys _like that –_ never need to – was more relief than loss. Maggie knew not everybody had to get married; Great-Aunt Jo had never married, but had lived with a series of small terriers and carried on teaching until she retired; though that might be better than running around after a man and giving her name away, it seemed lonely. When Maggie pictured her future she never saw that. She saw children, and for children, she’d always supposed, you hoped to include a husband, even if he wasn’t strictly necessary –

Of course, there would have to be a man in the picture _somewhere_ , but Maggie had seen enough episodes of _Friends_ to know there were ways and means.

It didn’t have to be a husband. Just a person.

Maggie thought, so that would make her – what? She knew the word _gay_ was polite no matter if in some people’s mouths it meant a bad thing. She wasn’t so sure about _queer._ The word starting with D was definitely out, as was the one starting with F, and all variations on the word _lesbian –_ and what about _lesbian_ itself? It sounded weighty and loud and like something Maggie didn’t see in herself. Like Ellen on the television with her short hair. But if it belonged to her…

She was still trying to decide.

Maggie idly twisted one of Eliza’s curls round her finger. Amy was demonstrating to Tania how the splinters of cheap wood folded into each other, and became unexpected shapes. The sidewalk was too hot to touch. She wanted to stay here forever. Never deal with the scary bits.

Her parents – there was no way she could tell her parents. Nobody in her family would take it well, except maybe Michael, and he was twelve. Her parents would be furious. And even her friends… She knew they didn’t have anything in principle against gay people. They hadn’t joined in the feeding frenzy on Lachlan Carruthers when he was outed. But he existed in the background of their lives – and, being a gay boy, wasn’t going to have a crush on any of them. How would they feel about Maggie, would could –

– Who, just maybe, already did –

– And who hadn’t told them what she was before she became their friend? She hadn’t _known_ , but even so.

No. She’d keep it to herself.

It struck Maggie she probably should have been more freaked out. She didn’t care. It was difficult to envision being freaked out on a day like this, feet still sore from waitressing, sun blinding high overhead, and her friends laughing at each other for some joke she’d missed. So what if the priest thought she’d burn in Hell? Maggie didn’t know if she believed in Hell, and even if it existed, she’d never been able to see what harm being gay would do to get her sent there. If there was a God, she thought – like Abuela had always said – He would care most that she didn’t hurt anyone, and loved her neighbour, and tried to help people in need: the important stuff. And if there was a God, He must have meant her to be this way.

Gay. Her. She was gay. She liked girls. Well, who wouldn’t?

Crap.

* 

‘I’m concerned.’

‘About who, dear?’

Bella Sawyer sighed and handed Richard another plate. It was Maggie’s turn to wash up and Matthew’s to dry, but Maggie had argued her way out of it. Some days she seemed to have Richard wrapped around her little finger. And how could Bella say no to all three of them? She didn’t want to be the bad guy, even if she personally maintained that her children would have plenty of time to get ready _after_ washing up.

Michael had made himself scarce too. At least it gave them an opportunity to talk. So many days they didn’t have the chance until the children had gone to bed, and by then they were both ready for nothing more than to grab what chance of relaxation they could.

‘Is it Maggie again?’

Bella had never been able to explain to Richard why she worried about their daughter. It was a mom thing, she supposed: why would she expect a man to get it? He cared about Maggie’s grades, keeping boys away, and spoiling her. He had no idea about the life of a teenage girl. But in fact, Bella thought Maggie was doing better. She’d finally got a sensible haircut and started wearing clothes that didn’t look like she planned to stage a housebreaking. Her grades were still very good and there had been murmurs from the school about college. (Wasn’t that a thought? Her daughter grown and ready to fly the nest in only a few years, her older son not far behind. At least Matthew would be her baby for a while yet.) She liked horses, which Bella never had herself but could accept as a reasonable hobby for a teenage girl. No, for once, it wasn’t Maggie Bella was most concerned about.

‘Michael got into a fight with his teacher today. He almost got detention, but the principal let him off. Said free speech still applied in middle schools.’

Richard hummed, carefully wiping round the inside of a glass. ‘Was he right?’

‘Who, the head?’

‘Michael.’

Bella busied herself testing the temperature of the tap.

‘Dear,’ Richard prompted.

‘You’re not going to think so.’ Bella handed him another plate, and forced herself to say the words: ‘It was about intelligent design. Its, uh, he thinks it has its merits.’

‘ _Michael!_ ’

Richard slammed the plate down with enough force Bella was worried he’d cracked it, whipped round, and stormed out of the kitchen.

Bella stood in a daze; she hadn’t been expecting a reaction _that_ strong. She stood in a daze for a second. Checked the plate. Looked all right.

From the direction of the living room, the shouting started.

Bella washed up the last few forks and set them carefully to dry, then headed through to see if things would need to be calmed down.

‘– The sort of nonsense I don’t expect to hear from my own son –’

Michael had been on the Playstation, making a man in a helmet do skateboarding tricks. On the screen, which Richard stood half-blocking, the figure hung paused in the air and the console was loose in Michael’s hands.

‘– Where you could possibly have picked up such an idea. If you’re not going to take the Bible at face value you might as well go the whole hog and beatify Darwin –‘

Bella slipped out of the room. Best to give Richard a few minutes to let off some steam; and she agreed with the gist of his argument, if not his conclusions. Was it so unreasonable that, talking to desert shepherds several thousand years ago, God might have glossed over some of the more overwhelming details when handing down his Word? Her husband preferred to take the Bible literally. That was a question for his own conscience, and the same went for Michael: but there was a slippery slope in letting foolish boys too clever for their own good pursue questions about religion, so Bella thought getting his head bitten off over it might not be a bad thing.

‘Or have you managed to learn _nothing_ in twelve years –‘

Movement on the stairs. Maggie leaned over the bannister. ‘Jeez, Mom, what happened?’ she asked.

‘Never you mind,’ said Bella, waving her away. ‘When did you say your friend would get here?’

‘Fifteen minutes. We’re almost ready.’

‘It’s very kind of you to take your little brother out,’ Bella added, as Maggie turned to go. ‘And you’re missing the Hallowe’en dance.’

Maggie lauged. ‘I was never going to that. Anyway, Mom, you have no idea what’s going to happen at that party.’ With a grin: ‘Think slutty rabbits and liquor in the punch. You wouldn’t want me there.’

‘Oh, I don’t believe that. You’d have fun. It’s good to join in with the crowd sometimes.’

Maggie rolled her eyes and headed back upstairs.

Uh-oh. Michael had found his voice and started yelling back. Bella headed in to intervene.

‘I don’t have to think exactly what you think! If it’s true I’ll be able to figure it out for myself!’

‘There’s nothing to _figure out –_ ‘

‘That’s enough. Both of you,’ said Bella. She stepped between them. Richard was too close, towering over Michael, who took the opportunity to scoot backwards. ‘Richard, I think he gets the point. And Michael, you’re going to apologise for talking back to your dad, aren’t you?’

Sullenly, but clearly enough, Michael said, ‘Sorry, Dad.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘Am I in trouble? For what I said at school?’

‘No. Only your dad’s bad graces.’ She nodded. ‘I think that’s enough Playstation for one night. Go and do your homework.’

‘I did it already.’

Smart alec. ‘Then you should be studying, shouldn’t you? And why don’t you put the dishes away, dear?’ Richard grumbled, but went.

The bad mood was still fizzling out when the bell rang. Bella had forgotten which friend of Maggie’s would be going out with them. It turned out to be the chubby Japanese girl.

‘Aren’t you wearing a costume?’ Bella asked Tania.

Tania looked down at herself, then shrugged. ‘I’m Willow,’ she said, as if that was explanation. ‘From Buffy, you know? She’s a witch but she dresses just like everyone else.’

‘All right, then,’ said Bella, not convinced everyone else wore ill-fitting cord jackets. How did Maggie end up with such friends? That girl Amy was no better: bookish, and quiet to the point of surliness. Even Eliza, the most normal of them, didn’t strike Bella as the height of popularity. How had she raised a daughter to be one of those uncool kids who got themselves picked on and never invited to parties?

(Bella did like Eliza’s parents. She’d met them a few times after sleepovers, and talked to Eliza’s mother about volunteering at their respective churches. The Wilkies were Lutheran but Bella saw nothing to disagree with in their values, though the news had made Richard shake his head and mutter about Evangelicals; and all-around she considered them lovely people. Though she could see where Eliza got her lack of fashion sense. Maggie had no such excuse.)

Maggie thudded down to the bottom of the stairs, greeted Tania quickly, and turned in sweeping fashion. ‘Everybody ready?’ she asked. ‘I introduce – Count Dracula!’

Matthew marched out to the top of the stairs. Maggie really had done quite a job on him: ghoulish face paint, slicked-back hair, and a red cape over a starched suit complete with bow tie. Maggie hissed, ‘Turn around!’ and Matthew did a spin.

He was too young to stay regal for long, and immediately ruined the effect by bouncing on his toes. ‘I’m a vampire, look, Maggie made me a vampire!’ He ran down the stairs to bare his teeth at Bella. ‘Look at my teeth! See?’ A set of sharp false teeth, slightly too big for his mouth, gleamed up at her.

‘Very impressive,’ said Bella. ‘Don’t bite anyone, mind.’ Matthew turned to Richard, who’d cooled down enough to manage a smile that almost reached his eyes and lifted his younger son by the armpits, squealing, for a closer look.

Maggie shouted into the living room, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come?’

‘I think I’m a bit old for trick-or-treating,’ Michael shouted back.

‘Fine. I won’t bring you back any candy.’

By now Michael had reached the door. He leaned against it, looking his big sister up and down. Bella noticed Richard going tense, and thought Michael could at least have tried to look a bit sorry.

‘What?’

‘You know Buffy’s _blonde_ , don’t you? You can’t be Buffy.’

‘It’s Hallowe’en. I can be anything I like.’

‘Yeah, she can!’ Matthew chimed in. He wriggled down from Richard’s grasp and grabbed Maggie’s hand. ‘Are we going? Are we going now?’

Maggie’s costume was much simpler than Matthew’s: a black tank top, tight jeans, and a crossbow. Knowing Maggie, the crossbow probably worked. She could have been wearing everyday clothes, though ones eminently unsuitable for the end of October in Nebraska, and Bella warned her, ‘You’ll be cold.’

Maggie made a show of reaching up to take her jacket with her, then slung it over her shoulder instead of putting it on. She grabbed the dog’s lead. ‘Dad, do you mind if we take Rocco? He can be our hellhound.’

‘No, go ahead. He’ll enjoy the walk.’

‘Can we _go_ now?’

Maggie grabbed the dog and three plastic jack-o’-lantern buckets, checked Matthew’s teeth, and led them out. Michael retreated into the living room.

Bella shook her head.

‘What, dear?’

‘Girls that age should _want_ to be at the school dance, not traipsing round the suburbs with their little brothers collecting candy.’ Richard gave her a not-this-again look. ‘Yes, I know. You don’t think it’s anything to fuss about.’

‘Kids these days grow up fast enough. Would you rather she was dressing herself like a slut and hanging around in barns with boys? That’s what the cool kids do, as I remember.’

‘Not at fourteen.’

‘Not much older.’ He rubbed Bella’s arms, and she allowed herself to unwind a little. ‘Maggie’s a good kid. Her last report card was great. And you might not think much of her friends, but those mousy girls aren’t going to get her into trouble.’

His hands moved up to her shoulders, resting there, like a weight grounding her. Richard tilted his head, searching Bella’s face with his big gentle eyes. ‘No?’

Bella sighed. ‘It’s this constant fight. To get her dress properly, to act like a _girl_ , and – you’re going to hate me for saying it, but teaching her to make crossbows and climb trees hasn’t helped.’

‘How so?’ Richard chucked Bella under the chin, half-laughing. ‘Don’t see how wearing a dress would stop her firing a crossbow.’

Bella laughed too. ‘Well, you get her into the dress and I’ll hand her the arrows.’

‘She’s fourteen. She’s stubborn. She’ll grow out of it. Remember what you were like at that age?’

‘I only wanted to fit in. Oh, and I wanted you to like me.’

Laughing again: ‘Is that so?’

Bella pushed her head into his shoulders. Over twenty years and he could still make her blush. ‘Michael will grow out of it too.’

‘Let’s hope so. Or we’ll send him to live with your sister.’

‘Oh, very funny.’

* 

‘Do you mind if I change the station?’

‘Go ahead.’

Maggie wove through static until she found a channel playing the kind of traditional carols Abuela had taught her the words to when she was small. Abuela, Abuela – Christmas always made her think of Abuela. She’d hosted every year Maggie could remember until, one year, she simply wasn’t there, and they’d never again go round on Christmas morning to gorge themselves on tamales, rice, panettone-minus-the-sultanas and fresh natilla by the light of red-wax candles. Never again. The house had been sold.

It had only been a few weeks before Christmas when she died and the holidays immediately afterwards belonged to a quiet, dull space of time Maggie could hardly remember. The year later she’d dug out the recipe for the iced gingerbread cookies Abuela had always made (and sent them home with in boxes, along with armfuls of Hershey’s and Rocky Road, because by then nobody had space left). Mom sniffed at tamales and natilla but she adored gingerbread. So Maggie was making them for the third year running; and this year coconut cake, but that was pretty much done.

Michael, who’d commandeered the kitchen table to write out place settings with his new calligraphy set, hummed along to _O Little Town Of Bethlehem_ while Maggie sifted the ingredients into a big mixing bowl. Through the back window she could see, in the settled snow, a family of fluffy chickadees and one little olive kinglet squabbling over the suet balls she and Matthew had put on the bird table the previous day. The trees’ bare branches stretched like dark veins across the still white background. Inside, the air was warm and beginning to smell of coconut and vanilla.

For a few minutes, there was perfect peace.

Of course it couldn’t last.

Maggie managed to hold in a sigh when Mom bustled into the kitchen and set to work on Christmas lunch. The ham (yuck) had gone into the slow cooker hours ago, so the main dishes to be prepared now were the vegetables, and all the sauces and glazes to go with them. Seeing he’d almost finished the place settings, she drafted Michael to peeling potatoes, while shouting back and forth to the rest of the house. Dad came in briefly, shaking off snow from his boots, to chase Rocco into the utility room. Matthew raced back and forth until Mom told him sharply to start setting the table.

The chickadees had flown away.

Maggie made sure all her things were gathered on the counter to one side of the oven and let Mom have the rest of the space. She concentrated on her baking, trying to ignore them all, wondering if Eliza had opened her present yet. She knew the Wilkies saved their present-opening until after church, which should have finished by now; but it might have run over, or they could have stopped to talk, or any number of things; so if could be either. If not yet, then soon.

Maggie wished she could see Eliza’s reaction when she opened it.

She wished _they_ could have gone to church on Christmas morning, instead of struggling to stay awake through freezing Midnight Mass. Though Maggie did like their Christmas mornings. This year she’d been the second to wake, and had come downstairs to find Matthew amid a mass of presents. Michael had joined them not much later. They’d tried to guess what everything was and dared each other to peek under the wrapping until the older two deemed it safe to ply their parents with coffee and drag them out of bed, then launched into the carnage of unwrapping.

Maggie had done pretty well, all told. She’d received the Playstation games she wanted, and new trainers, and a couple of books from Eliza she was dying to start. Later. For now the books and her other gifts lay in a mostly-neat pile on her bed. The wrapping paper had been stuffed into a garbage bag, and the living room had been tidied to perfection, which Maggie was confident anyone outside the family would call unnecessary effort on Christmas Day –

‘Pardon?’

Mom had said something to her, but Maggie couldn’t have repeated it back. She’d been away with the fairies. Or was it Christmas elves?

‘I said, you didn’t get many cards from school this year.’

‘No?’ said Maggie, not sure where Mom was going with this. She scattered flour on the counter to roll out the dough. ‘Pass me the rolling pin?’

Mom moved out of the way to let Maggie reach it. ‘I’m just wondering if everything’s all right with people at school.’

‘Sure, Mom.’ Here they went again. Couldn’t she at least have Christmas off? Things were all right. Things were _good_. To her own surprise, Maggie liked high school. No, “liked” was too strong a word – it wasn’t as if she’d have gone of her own volition – but it was a distinct improvement on middle school: none of the really stupid kids in her classes, only one teacher she actively disliked, and all the sudden talk of college offering the prospect of an escape from Nowheresville, Nebraska. Not to mention, she knew now why so much of her classmates’ behaviour had never made sense to her; and she might have only told one person, and the secret weight of it might feel like an iron band around her chest, and it might be settling into a permanent cold fury at a world determined to condemn her for being different – but, still, she felt better for knowing, and it had helped her to avoid tripping headlong into any of the many traps high school social life could set.

‘I’m just asking.’

‘I’m not in third grade. People aren’t just handing out cards to everyone in the class these days.’

Mom hummed. ‘You know when I was round talking to Marie the other day, I saw Rosie had a whole collection of cards. All over the piano. But you wouldn’t know about that. Like you keep telling me, you’re not friends with Rosie any more.’

‘No, Mom. I’m not.’

‘You really should try harder –‘

‘Mom, I’ve _got_ friends.’ She heard the interruption a second too late and cringed.

‘Yeah. Weird ones,’ Michael piped up from Mom’s other side. Maggie glared at him. What would he know? He was in the seventh grade.

Her glare must have had the opposite of its intended effect. Instead of being cowed, Michael had decided to get her wound up. Grinning, Maggie’s _soon-to-be-dead_ little brother continued, ‘And didn’t you start hanging out with that gay kid?’

‘Hush,’ said Mom. ‘Don’t spread rumours.’

‘It’s not a rumour. Everyone knows he is.’

Silence. Mom turned to Maggie, frowning lightly. ‘If it’s true I don’t want you spending time with someone like that.’

It took a moment for the weight of the words to sink in. ‘It’s just a nasty rumour,’ said Maggie, then mouthed at Michael to _shut up._ Michael flinched away. He wasn’t a total idiot: at least some of the time, he could tell when she meant it. ‘Dan’s one of my best friends. I’ll have to bring him round. You’ll like him.’

Mom looked mollified. ‘If you’re sure.’

 _Someone like that._ The words ricocheted around the inside of her head. Maggie cut stars from the gingerbread dough and carefully lifted them onto the baking tray. The acid taste in her mouth, the knot between her ribs: anger? Fear. Fear belonging to something she didn’t know how to fight and couldn’t run from.

She’d always known they would be mad, if – when – they found out. Mad she could deal with. Disapproval she could deal with. But Mom’s tone hadn’t been disapproving. It had been dismissive. Like Maggie could just up and drop Dan, easy as throwing out old wrapping paper.

Dan was a stranger to Mom. Honestly, he talked like that about all Maggie’s friends. That was all.

Abuela wouldn’t have told her to stop being friends with Dan. She’d have asked what he was like. But they’d marked the fourth anniversary of her death a couple of weeks ago.

Once she’d shoved the final batch of cookies into the oven, Maggie muttered some excuse and escaped to the bathroom. She sat on the sickly pink edge of the bath with her hands on her knees, swallowing the taste of all the lies, trying to collect herself.

‘Merry goddamn Christmas,’ she muttered.

Dan was gay, of course. That he was gay and that everyone at school believed it were two separate questions: he’d never admitted to it in public, so could maintain plausible deniability (not that this stopped anyone from yelling _f_ across the school corridors). But he’d told Maggie. Maggie didn’t know why it was he’d thought he could trust her – they were friends, but that wasn’t enough – was it because she’d told some of the boys baiting him to shut the hell up? Was it because he’d guessed about her? But that wasn’t what he’d said, when she whispered her own secret back: because she needed to tell someone, because speaking it aloud made her feel more real, because she’d wanted to let him know he wasn’t alone.

(She’d told Rocco first, and he’d whined at her until she stopped talking nonsense and gave her the chew toy. She’d told Abuela’s headstone, but Maggie didn’t think she was there. She couldn’t tell – she couldn’t tell Eliza, who was her best friend, because what if Eliza -? And she couldn’t tell the others first, Amy or Tania or anyone else, because it might have been easier but it would have been a betrayal. So she’d only told Dan, out of living humans, and he’d said, _I’m not surprised,_ and Maggie had believed for an instant it might always be like that.)

Even if they’d known how much their careless words hurt, they wouldn’t have understood. Oh, God, if Tia Laura started off on one today Maggie didn’t know what she’d do. They’d be here soon, Laura and her kids, with bags full of presents and green beans in Tupperware and panettone. They’d distract Mom from worrying about Maggie’s inferior _social life_ in the whirlwind of food and music and arguments about the best way to make the star stay on the Nativity set and maybe, by the grace of God or whatever other force guided the universe, they’d get through the day without talking politics or asking her if she had a boyfriend.

She could pretend to be dating Dan. But the mere idea of it was too funny to keep up for long.

Maggie counted to ten. She’d been in here long enough. She flushed the toilet she hadn’t used and scrubbed her hands in lavender soap, looking out at a snow-covered world embellished by the competitively garish lights on several of the houses. (Their own house was relatively restrained. Dad would have happily joined in with the madness, but Mom had drawn the line at a neat line of icicle lights round the roof and a single reindeer in the front yard.)

She braced herself before heading back into the kitchen to retrieve the cookies and pipe icing onto them in bright Christmassy colours. In the dining room, once that was done, she grabbed Michael and twisted his arm behind his back until he yelped. ‘Okay, Mags. I won’t call your friends weird again.’

‘Good. And I won’t tell Dad how Rocco learned to open the cupboards.’ Maggie squinted at the place settings, took a turn around the table for a better look, and started grabbing them to rearrange them into something less likely to start a family feud. Michael rubbed his arm as if she’d actually hurt him. Cheeky brat. She’d bought him the calligraphy set, too.

She’d just about finished when the phone rang.

Dad picked it up. ‘Maggie! It’s for you.’

Eliza.

‘Hey, Lize. Merry Christmas.’

‘You’re ridiculous. You know that?’

Maggie was glad Eliza couldn’t see her right now: she could smile as freely as she liked. Then she remembered other people _could_ see her – not right at the moment, in the hall, but they might show up at any moment – and at least one of them knew who she was talking to.

But she couldn’t stop smiling. She thought of Eliza turning her present over, wondering why Maggie had given her _clothes_ , until she opened it and saw the punk zombies in green and red on the front.

‘I can take it back, if you –‘

‘No.’

‘So you like it?’

‘It’s perfect.’ Maggie twisted the phone cable round her finger, basking in a warm glow of pride and the sound of Eliza’s voice. ‘My parents thought it was something Satanic for a moment there.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Yeah. Peter almost choked. Oh – I’ve gotta go. See you tomorrow, right?’

‘Right. Tomorrow. Merry Christmas.’ Wait. She’d said that already, hadn’t she?

‘Merry Christmas, Maggie,’ said Eliza. ‘And you’d better save me some of those cookies!’

She hung up. Maggie waited until echo of Eliza’s voice faded inside her own head, then put the phone back in its cradle, still smiling too widely.

*

**2003**

‘We must catch up more often. Bye-bye now.’

Bella clicked the phone to end the call and let the smile fall from her face. What a dull woman. And now she’d missed half her show. She unmuted the television, picked up the iron, and settled back in to working the creases out of Richard’s shirts.

Something slammed. It sounded like the back door.

Bella put the iron down – she’d only managed half a shirt – and headed out to investigate. She wondered briefly if she should grab a weapon. No. It was the middle of the afternoon, still broad daylight, and a Thursday. Who broke into a house at half past four on a Thursday?

The dog was barking. Then, through the ajar kitchen door, Bella heard a voice.

‘Hush, puppy. It’s just me. Silly dog.’

Bella relaxed, feeling about as silly as the dog. But why the hell was her daughter sneaking in through the kitchen?

A boy said, ‘Your house is very…’

‘Clinical?’

‘I was gonna say clean.’

Oh. That would do it.

She might have surprised them when they came through – her first thought, instinctively, was that Maggie was trying to smuggle the boy upstairs, though it wasn’t how _she’d_ have gone about it – but as the seconds stretched on she realised they were staying in the kitchen. A noise like the fridge, maybe, opening and closing, and Maggie telling the boy sharply to, ‘Sit there.’

Bella went in.

Both kids greeted her with _busted_ expressions. More immediately alarming was that Bella could barely see the expression, in the boy’s case, under his swollen eye. Maggie had paused in the motion of pressing frozen peas to the boy’s ribs, which were covered in bruises.

‘Mom. Hi. You’re early. … This is Dan.’

Bella threw up her hands. ‘I’m going to fetch the iodine.’

She waited until she’d finished picking gravel out of the boy’s palms (which he took meekly, only squeaking in pain once – followed by, ‘Sorry, Mrs Sawyer,’ when she paused) to interrogate them. ‘Were you in a fight, son?’

‘Um.’ The kids glanced at each other. Maggie flexed her hand.

‘Would you believe me if I said I fell off my bike, Mrs Sawyer?’ said Dan. He was a polite boy, she couldn’t fault him for that, and withered under her stare. ‘No. Didn’t think so.’

‘He wasn’t fighting. He was just getting beaten up.’

‘Was he now?’

The boy wouldn’t meet her gaze.

Lord bless, Michael had never been in a fight in his life, and Bella had grown up with only a sister. All she knew of injuries like this, she’d learned from late-night detective shows. But he did look, to Bella’s untutored eyes, like he’d been more on the receiving end of a beating. She told Dan to press the frozen peas to the welts on his face, _lightly_ , and handed him a bag of corn for the ribs, then pulled Maggie aside.

‘He wouldn’t be the boy Michael was talking about?’ she said, under her breath. ‘The one who – plays for the wrong team?’

Maggie hesitated. ‘It’s the same person but Mom, it’s only a _rumour_ , I _told_ you. Those idiots at school, they just need somebody to pick on.’

Bella took Maggie’s hand and lifted it for inspection. If the redness round the knuckles hadn’t confirmed her suspicions, Maggie’s expression would have been telling enough. ‘Maggie.’

‘What?’

‘Sometimes I think you’re trying to make yourself a social outcast.’

She said it automatically. It was a fight she knew how to start. It didn’t express the sickening horror Bella felt at the thought of her daughter in a fight, even as the one dealing out the punches. She couldn’t say that. She could hardly think of it.

Maggie scowled and snatched her hand away. ‘Come off it, Mom. What am I supposed to do, stand there and watch my friend get his ass kicked?’ Pointedly, she added, ‘I’m not exactly popular to begin with. Not all of us want to be queen of ninth grade. I don’t care.’

‘I’m not talking about having nobody to sit with at lunch,’ said Bella, trying not to let Maggie see how much that stung. ‘You stand up for this boy, and he won’t be their only target.’

‘I can handle myself.’

‘Oh, you can, can you?’

Maggie said, very deliberately, ‘I’ve been handling myself since kids in preschool asked me if my skin colour would rub off. I don’t like bullies.’

To Bella’s knowledge, Maggie had never been bullied. It wasn’t something she’d ever worried about. She let Maggie go. ‘Fine. We’ll talk about this when your dad gets home.’

Dan was still there when he arrived. Bella explained the situation quickly, and let Richard poke his head into the living room to see for himself. She believed Maggie was telling the truth about just being friends, at least, because they’d been happy to eat Doritos under Bella’s watchful eye until the end of her show and then kill aliens on the Playstation for the rest of the afternoon. She couldn’t help being disappointed, though she supposed Maggie talking to boys at all was a start _._ And the apparent innocence of their friendship had helped reassure Richard.

Even so, after a brief conversation, Richard said, ‘Your parents must expect you home for dinner soon.’ Dan took the hint and eased himself, wincing, into his coat. Maggie went to wave him off.

‘Do you have something against the boy?’ said Bella.

‘He’s too floppy-wristed for my liking,’ said Richard. ‘Maggie says he’s not queer, fine, the kid’s not queer. But that sort always rub me up the wrong way.’

‘I thought he was quite charming,’ Bella teased. Ignoring her husband’s pained look, she continued, ‘I’m more worried he’s going to get her into trouble. Fighting!’

In a son, she’d have known how to handle it. Not that she wouldn’t have been angry, but she wouldn’t have been _concerned._ Boys got in fights: it was just boys being boys. The irony was neither of her sons were like that, and she loved them for it. Matthew was her sweetheart, a lovely docile child, and while Michael rough-housed happily enough he preferred to talk his way out of serious arguments. It was Maggie who often didn’t give him the chance. What was Bella supposed to do with a daughter more violent than her brothers? She’d never been able to make sense of the girl. God, what if it had happened at school, and she’d been caught? Maggie couldn’t go getting involved like that in things that didn’t concern her. And Richard, oh, he’d encouraged her –

Once Maggie had shut the door behind Dan (using the front door this time), it was Richard she turned to for support. ‘You should be proud of me, Dad. You’re always telling me to stick up for myself.’

‘For yourself,’ Bella pointed out; sharply, because Richard was starting to look like he thought she had a point. They’d already agreed on Maggie’s punishment. He’d be sleeping on the couch if he reneged now. ‘Not for people who’re none of your business.’

‘Dan is my business. He – I keep telling you. He’s my _friend._ ’

‘Hmm.’

‘How many of them were there?’ asked Richard.

‘Three.’

‘Big lads?’ he said, sounding impressed. Bella could have slapped him. He was going to fold. She could just tell; he was going to let Maggie off before Bella had a chance to talk him round.

‘Yeah. Like –‘ She stretched her hand up, above Richard’s head, to indicate. Bella thought of Maggie, five foot and change, a hundred pounds in heavy boots, facing off against three towering teenage boys. It was wasn’t an image she’d needed in such clarity: she was pissed at Richard for asking, furious at Maggie for putting herself in danger like that, helplessly aware she’d missed the window for yelling at her over it.

‘And Dan’s not the only one who’ll have a black eye,’ said Maggie.

Richard folded his arms. ‘You’re grounded, of course,’ he said.

‘I know.’

Damn him. Both words and gesture were ritual: he’d folded. But he’d kept to the letter of the punishment, so Bella couldn’t tear into him for it, and Maggie would know both that she wasn’t really in trouble (not with _him_ ) and that nothing worse was coming. Damn him, damn him.

‘And remember you’re not to bring boys round when you think neither of us are home,’ Richard added, raising an eyebrow.

‘It’s not _like –_ yeah, whatever,’ said Maggie. She wrapped her arms around Richard’s waist and, rolling his eyes, he patted her on the head.

He offered Bella a challenging grin and she thought about kicking him out of bed anyway; but he was no doubt already working on how to get himself back into her good graces. Shaking her head at the pair of them, she stalked off to make Maggie’s least-favourite dinner.

* 

‘Wanna watch a movie?’

‘Ha. Not one of your movies again,’ said Amy, tipping the Risk pieces into their bag and stacking the cards together. She’d just swept the board with all their asses. Maggie and Eliza, eliminated a while ago, had been watching for the past half-hour from the ragged sofa at the corner of the basement while Amy dealt with the final holdout.

Sophie, taking the loss gracefully, said, ‘What’s wrong with Eliza’s movies?’

‘Nothing. They only give me nightmares.’

‘They do not,’ said Eliza. ‘When did you ever have a nightmare?’

‘After the last one. I told you.’

‘You did not.’

‘Okay. Maybe not an actual nightmare. More of a bad dream. But it wasn’t much fun, I can tell you, and Hannibal Lecter had a starring role.’ She stuck her tongue out at Eliza.

Maggie found herself suddenly jolted from her comfortable position and without a pillow as Eliza sat forward to lob a cushion at Amy’s head. She missed. ‘You’re pathetic.’ Maggie pulled her back and settled her head again on Eliza’s lap.

‘I could stay for a movie. What movies do you have?’ said Sophie.

Amy, with great reluctance, pointed towards the cabinet. Sophie crawled over and started riffling through the films. ‘For God’s sake, Eliza. Do you only have horror movies?’

‘No. Some of them are thrillers.’

‘Black comedies,’ said Maggie.

‘I think there’s an action film or two in there. And a copy of _My Neighbour Totoro_ _._ ’

‘Ooh, what about _Heathers_? We could watch _Heathers_ ,’ said Maggie, following the “black comedy” thread.

Amy put her head in her hands, and knocked the Risk board off the edge of the table. Sophie said, ‘Is that the one where Christian Slater shoots everybody?’

‘Yeah!’

‘Told you so,’ said Amy, folding the board away. ‘Remember we used to watch Sesame Street together, Lize? You were such a sweet kid. No serial killers, no –' She gestured in the direction of Eliza’s T-shirt. ‘No zombies.’

Maggie bit her lip. Eliza had worn the shirt to school exactly once, and avoided a trip to the principal’s office only by quickly covering it with a borrowed sweatshirt when her homeroom teacher challenged her on it. (“Too violent” had been the complaint.) Outside of school, Maggie saw her in it a fair amount. She’d asked Eliza last week if the T-shirt ever made it into the wash, and Eliza had flushed pink while insisting that yes, it did.

Amy and Sophie both opted against watching a film. Eliza said to Maggie, ‘You’ll stay, won’t you?’

‘Course.’

They traipsed upstairs to see the others off. Eliza’s mom bustled about a bit, asking if she needed anything and if she wanted to call home to make sure her parents didn’t mind her staying late. Maggie knew a warning when she heard one and took the offered phone.

‘Hey, ask if you can stay over,’ hissed Eliza.

Maggie nodded, putting a hand over her mouth. ‘Hi, Dad.’ After hanging up, she told Eliza: ‘No good. He says neither of them will have time to pick me up tomorrow.’ Maggie could hardly wait to be able to drive. Or have a car. ‘I can stay until he comes up to get Michael from fencing practice, though.’

That would give them time for a movie. They settled on _Heathers,_ at Maggie’s insistence and Eliza’s unruffled capitulation. Once the disc was in Eliza thumped onto the sofa, curling her legs up next to Maggie, and Maggie pulled the heavy, scratchy blanket over both of them. Eliza dug out a half-pack of cigarettes and lit one, took a drag, offered it to Maggie.

Maggie thought about her Abuela, dead. She thought about sitting on the old woman’s lap, when she was very small, watching tendrils of smoke twist into the air, and piles of loose tobacco, neatly cut, rolled into their paper pens. A smoker’s cough. She took the cigarette and inhaled, letting the smoke fill her lungs, the world at once sharper but less worrisome; and, failing once again to blow a smoke ring, passed it back.

‘You think high school was really like that in the eighties?’ said Eliza.

‘I don’t think anywhere’s ever been like that. Okay – one.’

‘One what?’

‘One strike against JD being a psycho.’ Maggie received the cigarette for a final drag and leaned forward to stub it out in the ashtray. Smoke clinging to her hands, she absently braided bits of Eliza’s hair while they laughed at the clothes and quoted lines half a second before the characters.

Halfway through, they came to the staging of Kurt and Ram’s murders as a suicide pact, and Eliza went oddly quiet. She looked up the stairs as if expecting her parents to burst in, though they knew from experience practically no sound carried from the basement. The space had been claimed over the years by Eliza and her brother, and their parents – half-trusting, half-preferring not to know – mostly left them to it. It wouldn’t have been safe otherwise to smoke, or get tipsy on scotch from the back of the liquor cabinet (which Maggie hadn’t liked: it was dangerous to be so out of control, right next to the person she spent so much effort controlling herself around), or watch films with subplots about dead not-gay teenagers. It wasn’t totally safe as it was. That was part of the thrill.

Maggie poked Eliza. ‘Whatcha thinking?’

‘Nothing,’ said Eliza.

Maggie poked her again. Eliza responded by tickling the soles of Maggie’s feet. Maggie grabbed her arms to pull her away, and they wrestled for a minute, until Maggie successfully pinned Eliza and found herself thinking, how easy it would be to stare into Eliza’s eyes forever.

She drew back. Focus on the movie. Winona Ryder was pretty but she wasn’t half as compelling; she wasn’t _here_ , and she wasn’t Eliza.

Maggie wondered what it would be like to kiss her. She wondered, as they rearranged the blanket, as she caught Eliza giving her an odd glance, what her best friend would do. Because there were moments, like this one, when she almost thought –

The moment broke. Eliza settled with her head on Maggie’s shoulder.

She might say, _No, I don’t think of you that way_ , and Maggie could live with that because if she was honest with herself, and logical, she knew anything more was unlikely. Or she might say, _You’re a girl. That’s disgusting. I thought we were friends._ It was one thing to laugh at not-really-gay-anyway kids in a movie. Maggie didn’t know how Eliza might feel about having a friend who was gay. Gay and in – gay and with a crush on her. God, how did you bring that up?

Maggie thought about Dan, with cracked ribs, cowering: less so now, because his bullies were cowards and one black eye from a girl had been shame enough, for a while. She thought about hiding for what seemed like forever, for all the long years until she could get out of here. One thousand, two hundred, seventy-seven days to her eighteenth birthday. She’d worked it out.

How much longer could she live, holding herself secret? Lying to her best friend?

When she was almost sure –

She was the one who’d gone quiet now. Eliza passed Maggie another cigarette. Maggie lazily passed it back and snuggled in closer. She felt the fabric of Eliza’s T-shirt against her arm, gone soft with wear, the T-shirt Eliza always wore that Maggie had given her. She imagined taking it off. She imagined, for a frenzied second, that Eliza could hear her thoughts. But that would surely have elicited more reaction than simply taking the cigarette back to blow a smoke ring.

‘Show-off,’ said Maggie.

They were coming to the end of the movie. In the middle of the boiler-room scene, Eliza squeezed her eyes shut and hid her face in Maggie’s shoulder.

‘You know what happens!’ said Maggie.

‘That doesn’t mean I wanna watch it,’ Eliza huffed. ‘I don’t like the bit with the finger.’

Maggie kept her eyes on the screen. ‘Okay. The blood’s gone. You can watch again now,’ she said, trying not to sound reluctant; she didn’t really want to give up Eliza’s breath on her neck, the near-touch of her skin through flimsy cotton, or her weight half-resting on Maggie’s chest and legs.

Shit. She had it bad.

But Eliza didn’t seem to be in a hurry to move either. When she did turn back round she remained pressed against Maggie’s side and Maggie could almost taste the words on her tongue, she knew what they were, but she couldn’t say them.

No way she could say it in person. She didn’t have the guts.

It was the Valentine’s dance, next Saturday. Mom had bribed Maggie into going, so she had a ticket, and a dress, and no date – naturally. Nor did Eliza, not for lack of offers or any effort on their friends’ part, and they could – they could say they were going as friends, or not mention it at all, but they would know the difference, it would be their secret – and Eliza would say yes. Maggie was almost sure of it.

Almost.

But wasn’t the danger part of the thrill?

‘Do you think I could pull off a red ribbon like that?’

‘Yeah. You’d look good,’ said Maggie. Eliza went pink.

The credits rolled. They stayed where they were, talking about nothing important, until Eliza’s mom knocked at the top of the stairs, then moved as slowly as possible to delay the end of the evening. Maggie hugged Eliza at the door and finally darted out into the dark.

As she made Michael shove his fencing gear over and strapped herself in, Dad said, ‘Did you have fun?’

Maggie grinned. ‘Yeah. I did.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two exists. Finally. I'm even mostly happy with it. Now to go and sort out the chaotic notes for the next bit… (Which will hopefully show up in less than three weeks.)
> 
> Did you know: just as cats are obligate carnivores, writers are obligate word-ivores. Comments are not a staple food source for writers but have proven benefits on health, motivation and production of fic and many authorities now consider them critical to a balanced diet.

**Author's Note:**

> I live! Shame the same can't be said for all my characters… Um, sorry?
> 
> I probably shouldn't apologise. If you've made it this far, hopefully that means you liked it. It might be a while before this one updates because I should really, really go and start drafting something for the Sanvers Big Bang before I find myself with 7k to write in one night…
> 
> Statistically speaking, the "comment" is the most stable currency in fandom. It never decreases in value.


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